Workshop on the Dissemination Strategy for PKH Electronic Distribution

17 April 2014

The National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K) facilitated the "Strategic Electronic Distribution for PKH" workshop together with the Ministry of Social Affairs, National Development Planning Agency (BAPPENAS), Bank of Indonesia (BI), and in collaboration with Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA), on 16 April 2014 at the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta.

The workshop was attended by Vivi Yulaswati, director of the protection and community welfare at BAPPENAS, BFA’s Brian Le Sar and Oni Royani, director of social assistance at the Ministry of Social Affairs. It discussed the Family Hope Program (PKH) that was launched in 2007 as part of the Indonesian government’s national strategy on poverty reduction, by providing conditional cash transfers to poor and very poor households across Indonesia. The government plans to expand the programme to include 3.2 million beneficiaries in 2014, up from 2.3 million at the end of 2013. TNP2K is working together with BFA to develop a strategy for distribution systems or electronic payments, and to create a matrix of requirements for service providers.

In his speech, TNP2K’s Executive Secretary Bambang Widianto said the system could distribute funds more accurately to beneficiaries.

"This mechanism aims to motivate and accelerate the distribution process of social assistance programmes for the poor. Prior to implementation, however, we must also prepare strategies and solutions so that, during implementation, programmes will target beneficiaries better and, ultimately, reduce poverty," he said.

Another important point was raised by Yulaswati, who said that the distribution of social assistance as a means of financial inclusion can boost economic growth and strengthen the national economy.

Le Sar, in his presentation, described the experiences of financial inclusion and government-to-person projects in other countries. Such insight could provide useful lessons for strategies, in accordance with relative conditions, as well as highlight challenges met before and after the implementation of aid distribution, which are equally important stages.

The workshop aims to disseminate a draft of the PKH distribution strategy to the public and private sector in order to build and improve understanding and inputs.